Default! Default!

Here's a philosophical principle from Immanuel Kant:

"Act so that the maxim of thy will can always at the same time hold good as a principle of universal legislation." (Critique of Practical Reason)

That sounds really fancy, as translations from the German often do, but it can be reduced to the proverbial mother's question: "What would happen if everybody did that?"

In other words, it's a bad idea to lie to other people, because if everybody lies to everybody else, society cannot function.

So, bankers and financiers are appalled, yes, appalled, that people are walking away from mortgages when they go "under water," i.e., when the value of the house is less than the value of mortgage. The borrowers feel that they shouldn't make $500,000 payments on a $200,000 house. And this behavior is something that violates Kant's principle (known as the "Categorical Imperative"). If, after all, everyone just defaulted on their obligations, your boss could just decide not to send out your paycheck next week, and then where would you be?

So, this article by Daniel Gross is about how common this terrible behavior is on the part of big corporations.

Are you appalled?

The Old Passeth Away

Ferguson, Niall. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World. New York: The Penguin Press, 2008. 442 pages. Acknowledgements. Notes. List of Illustration. Index. $29.95. ISBN: 0-793-67093-4. Read 19 September-15 October 2009.

I reviewed this book back on November 7. It's a good book, and I'm sure it's out there in paperback now for your reading pleasure.

Since I finished it in October, and posted the review six weeks ago, I think it's time to remove it from the Current Reading list.

Flight to Freedom ...

There are some old lines that express the notion that people may do the right thing for the wrong reasons. There was a Chad Mitchell Trio song about the John Birch Society - "Fighting for the right to fight the right fight for the Right."

There is among historians a general feeling that the revolutions of 1848, which starred patriots like Kossuth, were uprisings against imperial governments which were preventing landowning classes (the Magyars, for example) from oppressing their Slavic peasants.

And there's the U.S. Civil War, a fight for the freedom to prevent people from being free.

This article by Daniel Gross is about something similar, if much less profound; it is about banks returning huge amounts of money to the U.S. Treasury, in order to have the right to waste their shareholders' money as they wish. I own stock in Citigroup, and when I consider that my company's management chose to give back billions of dollars, which they could be using to make profits and to straighten out their business, in order to get rid of government criticism of the amounts they pay themselves.

The next stockholders' meeting, I vote to remove the entire board, to cancel the executive compensation plan, and to put Ralph Nader in charge.

More on the Reading List

I spent some time this morning working on the Current Reading list. I added one book - Jester Leaps In by Alan Gordon, and I added some information to a number of others. The list now includes all of the books I finished in October, November, or December 2009, and the books I am now actively reading.

I plan to delete the books finished in October this weekend, and then I'll delete the books finished in November, and then we'll be into January.

Ignatius Urges Focus on Pakistan

David Ignatius is a columnist for the Washington Post. He makes some useful points in this column about Pakistan's need to gain control (Ignatius likes the term "sovereignty") over its own territory.

The problems with controlling the Pashtun on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border brings me back to the idea, bruited here some time ago, of creating a Pashtunistan, and then treating it as a separate country.

I said the other day that Afghanistan is a country without a nation. Like Belgium, where everyone except the king is either a Fleming or a Walloon, Afghanistan has no Afghans. Everyone is something else, and that something else is related to a population beyond the border. Pakistan is a little more coherent, but there are a lot more Punjabis, Sindis, Baluchis, and Pashtuns than there are Pakistanis.

The question I would have about controlling the NWFP (Northwest Frontier Province) and the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) is this: If it were possible for Pakistan to control these areas and integrate them into the national polity, would it be necessary? Or, conversely, if they need to make such an effort, are they capable of it?

Is Anti-Carbon also Anti-Human?

Anne Applebaum has gone all the way to Copenhagen to write an article about the downside of obsessing about climate change.

Robinson on Palin on Climate Change

Did you know that Sarah Palin used to believe in climate change? Yes, and that she thought that government action was needed to deal with it.

This article by Eugene Robinson provides a nice look at Palin then, vs. Palin now.

Well, as somebody once said, where you stand depends on where you sit.